Druids (7 page)

Having hoped for a more specific answer, I must have looked dubious, for his expression softened. “I cannot transfer my own experience to you, each must find his own. But I can tell you about the pattern.

“People who pray for luck are really seeking to grasp the pattern, Ainvar. There is no such thing as luck, that is only a word for being able to control events. The few who intuitively follow the pattern as it applies to themselves appear to have luck, for they are, without knowing it, drawing on the forces of creation. When they deviate from the pattern they lose contact with those forces, and thus with the power that influences events. Then we say they have become unlucky. When things work out well for you, you will know you are following your pattern as you should.”

My mind had snagged on one of his words like a strand of wool snagged on a bramble- “What does ‘intuitively’ mean?”

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A fine webbing of wrinkles fanned outward from the comers of Menua’s eyes when he smiled. “Intuition is the voice of the spirit within you.”

“I’ve heard it already!” I cried, remembering the night something had told me to pile Crom DaraTs arms with rocks. “At least, I think I have. Once.”

‘ ‘You must hear it more often than that, Ainvar. You must listen to it every day.”

“Can I leam how?”

“Of course, that is one of the things I am to teach you. You will begin by listening to the songs of the earth. The natural world and the world of spirits are connected through the pattern, remember? But most people do not bother to listen to nature’s voices, just as they do not look for the pattern.”

I glanced at the treetops again and he chuckled. “Not with your outer eye, Ainvar. Use your inner eye.”

“My inner eye?”

‘ ‘One of the senses of your spirit.”

I considered this. “I don’t think I have any.”

“Of course you do, everyone does. We are all bom with them, they come with the spirit that animates the flesh. Little children use them every day. Think back to your early childhood, Ainvar. Were you not aware of many things adults did not hear and see? Remember. Remember.”

His voice reached inside me, summoning.

Memory flooded through me.

When I was only a knee-child, my head not yet reaching Rosmerta’s hip, I had known there were other presences in our lodge. Since I was aware of them I assumed everyone else was. Every shadow was intangibly occupied. The night beyond the door was peopled with potential. I knew without question and without doubt.

I was not afraid of the dark; I had so recently emerged from the darkness of being unborn. An elusive memory lingered like a promise at the edge of my awareness, calling to me. Even then. Luring me out into the darkness, making me curious.

How could I have forgotten the many times I ran eagerly into the night, trying to recapture a lost magic, while Rosmerta scuttled after me, clucking and scolding like an old hen.

“I remember,” I said softly.

“Good. Then we can train you.” Menua pushed up the sleeves of his robe, revealing still-muscular forearms covered with wiry

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silver hair. Bees were humming in the glade. Soil smelled hot, leaves smelled green.

“First you must leam to be still,” the chief druid told me. “Be truly still, so your body is like an empty sack, gaping open.

“Whether you know it or not, your spirit is only held in your flesh by an act of will. You must relax your will and allow your spirit to move as freely as mist among the trees. Otherwise

your spirit, which is the essential and immortal You, might someday find itself trapped in a decaying body it must accompany into the tomb.”

The image of my spirit being imprisoned in my dead body was so horrific I determined to learn to free it no matter how hard I must work. I practiced being still, which was difficult, and letting my soul float, which seemed impossible. I felt as if I were sealed in a stoppered jar.

“Don’t squirm when you’re supposed to be concentrating,” Menua scolded me. “You are listening too much to the demands of your joints and muscles. Your body is not in charge, Ainvar. You are.”

I redoubled my efforts. The summer we had courted and won came to us sweetly and lingered long, and in time I learned to stop thinking of my body as myself. It was merely an outpost of me, a companion, a home in which I lived for a time. I grew easy in my skin.

Then one morning I heard a lark’sing; really heard a lark sing. As I listened spellbound, the piercingly pure cataract of musical sounds became echoes of a greater glory I experienced with a sense beyond hearing, a sense belonging to my untrammeled soul.

I ran to tell Menua. Words shaped for only five senses were inadequate, but he understood.

‘ ‘Now it begins for you, Ainvar. You can find the pattern anywhere. Hear it, see it, feel it. Where would you like to begin?”

I knew at once. “Can I have a man with a spear?” I asked.

Menua nodded. He did not even ask me to explain.

Taking a warrior called Tarvos with me to watch for the wolves I still remembered with a shudder, I left the fort to spend the night in the forest. Among the trees, without the barriers of walls and roof.

I went to seek the magic in the night with my newly awakened senses of the spirit.

I found a snug place for myself in the lee of a hillock and sent my bodyguard to stand a distance away, where he could hear me if I needed him but would not distract me. His expression told

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me he thought I was mad, but I was the chief druid’s apprentice. It was not given to warriors to question my actions.

After singing the song for the setting sun, I wrapped myself in my cloak and lay down to wait.

I had a long wait. Nothing happened. By sunrise I was stiff and hungry, yet determined to persevere.

Every night for eight nights I slept in the forest, with barrel—

chested, bandy-legged Tarvos poking his spear into every clump of shrubbery and muttering to himself. During the days I continued my studies with Menua, who was currently teaching me me motions of the stars.

On my ninth attempt I heard the music of the night.

Sometime after the moon disappeared a wind arose. The trees became its instruments. It played them with undulating volume, with sweeping susurrations of sound, with a great plumy movement billowing through, sighing away. Each tree had a voice. Oaks creaked, beeches moaned, pines hummed, alders whispered, poplars chattered.

I lay absolutely still, drowning m sound.

Then everything came together.

I was caught up in the rhythm of a dance, ecstatic and sublime, that had been going on long before there was any such being as Ainvar. I was dissolving into wind and moss and leaves, into a rabbit huddled in its burrow, into an owl swimming through the night on silent wings.

Disturbed by the rushing wind, cattle lowed in a distant meadow. Every cow had a distinctive voice their herder would have recognized among hundreds; each voice filled a particular space belonging to it alone in the larger pattern of sound, a pattern that included my own breathing and the scattering of insects in the leafmold and the pattern of raindrops striking the leaves.

Water rolled down my cheeks. Perhaps rain. Perhaps tears summoned by beauty.

The night sang. The earth smelled of rotting wood and tender shoots unfolding in darkness, feeding on decomposition, death and birth together in the pattern, one springing from the other.

Both in me. Both of me. I of them. I was the earth and the night and the rain, suspended at the apex of being. There was no time, no sound, no sight, no need of them.

I was.

Rapture.

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“Ainvar? Ainvar!”

I opened my eyes to find Tarvos crouched over me. His face was twisted with worry. His hair held the shape of the wind. “Ainvar, are you all right? If anything has happened to you the chief druid will hang me in a cage!”

Dawnlight filtered through the leaves above us. The air seemed gray and grainy. I sat up, surprised to find myself dizzy. My clothes were sodden. “I’m not dead,” 1 assured the warrior. “I’ve had the most wonderful experience. …”

“Mad,” said Tarvos with conviction. “All you druids are mad.” He extended a hand to help pull me to my feet.

I liked Tarvos. His jaw was too broad and there were gaps between his teeth—and he had called me a druid. I tried to smile at him, but my legs were shaking under me. My wet clothes clung like ice and I began shivering.

“You look terrible,” Tarvos informed me. ‘“Like an owl in an ivy bush, all staring eyes surrounded by leaves.” He briskly brushed the leaves off my clothing, but I kept on shivering uncontrollably.

“We’d better get you moving,” Tarvos said, giving me a shove. He might think of me as a druid, but he did not let that intimidate him. I liked him all the more for it.

As we walked back to the fort, I heard a sound in my ears like the sound a glass bottle makes if you strike it with metal. Tarvos somehow eased himself into my armpit and took part of my weight on himself. “Crazy druids,” he muttered.

“I’m not a druid yet,” I felt constrained to remind him.

“I’m a warrior because I was bom a warrior,” he replied. “You’re a druid for the same reason.”

Menua was not in our lodge. I yearned for my bed. Since I had given Tarvos no instructions, he followed me inside.

“Grog!” screamed the raven on the roof.

“Druids don’t live very well,” commented Tarvos, looking around. “I thought you’d have a lot of gold in here.”

“It’s in here,” I told him, tapping my forehead.

He looked dubious. “If you say so.” He shrugged his burly shoulders as if shrugging off a cloak; a characteristic gesture, I was to leam. “Do you want me to build a fire to dry your clothes?”

My head reminded me I should not have brought anyone into the chief druid’s lodge without Menua’s invitation. And a druid’s fire was sacred; no flame could be kindled on the summerdead hearth without an elaborate ritual.

I was chilled, my teeth were beginning to chatter. I had lain

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for a long time in the rain, I suppose. I started to say, “I can take care of myself, you can go now …” but the ringing in my ears grew louder and I wandered off into a grayness.

From a distance came the raven’s voice, chirping like a wren. I awoke to a sense of urgency. My skull was filled with cobwebs. Sorting among them, I could not find the thought I wanted. Menua was bending over me and I wanted to tell him about the night and the music, but my tongue refused to obey me. Tarvos is more obedient than my body, I thought angrily.

I became aware of a fire blazing. Raising my head dizzily, I saw Tarvos feeding sticks to the flames… .

The next time I emerged from the grayness, Suits the healer was rubbing a foul-smelling paste on my chest. “You should not have let him stay out all night m a storm,” she said over her shoulder to Menua.

“He’s a strong young man, and it was important to him. He must be given every opportunity to discover his abilities; our numbers are too small as it is. This is not the safest of times.”

Sulis bowed her head. “It is not. I don’t question your judgment,” she added submissively. Menua was the chief druid.

And Tarvos had. dared to build a fire on his hearth! I struggled to sit up. Sulis pushed me back onto my bed with one firm hand in the center of my chest. As she bent over me I saw the valley between her breasts in the deep neck of her gown.

“Where is Tarvos?” I demanded to know. “Did you put him in a cage? It wasn’t his fault!”

Menua’s face swam into my wavering sight.’ ‘Of course I didn’t put him in a cage. He took care of you, we are grateful.”

“I want to see him now,” I demanded feverishly. To my surprise, for I was not used to commanding the chief druid, Menua nodded and beckoned to someone. Tarvos stepped forward, unharmed.

“I’m here, Ainvar. You didn’t dismiss me, solstayed.”

I lay back bemused, imagining Tarvos stubbornly holding his place when the chief druid returned to the lodge.

Suits rubbed a fragrant liquid onto my upper lip. As the fumes drifted into my nostrils, I fell into an easy sleep, from which I eventually awoke, clearheaded but weak.

Tarvos was sitting on the floor near me, sharpening a knife on a whetstone. The bulky shape of his shoulders was reassuring. He wore me only tunic and leggings I had ever seen him in, garments unacquainted with washing, and the hair flowing down his back was the indeterminate color of old thatch. He was neither polished

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nor prepossessing, but he had refused to leave me when I was ill.

Tarvos the Bull, he was called.

I was young, my strength returned quickly. Later in the day Sulis came to check on my progress. Tarvos followed her with his eyes. “She has a nice haunch on her,” he commented when she had gone.

“She’s our healer!”

“She’s a woman,” he said with a shrug.

Menua allowed him to stay, though I never knew why.

Tarvos spread his bed outside the door to our lodge, but during the day he was inside with me, feeding me, bringing me water, encouraging me to get up when I was ready. He also provided me with an unexpected opportunity to enrich my head. Only a few winters older than I, the Bull had served as a warrior in several tribal battles and experienced many things I had not.

“Tell me what it’s like to be a warrior,” I said.

He looked blank. “It’s something to do.”

Tarvos was not a wordy man, but I persisted. “Druids need to know all they can about everything, including battle, Tarvos. If you share your feelings with me I can experience war through you.”

He considered this, then stared into space for a time, obediently seeking words for things not usually discussed outside the broth-erhood of battle. While he pondered I poured him a cup of wine from Menua’s personal store, thankful that the chief druid was away, supervising the castrating of the bull calves.

I held out the cup and Tarvos accepted it eagerly. When he had taken a long drink, I urged, “Now. Tell me what it means to be a warrior.”